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Police investigate a homicide in west central Springfield on Feb. 2, 2017. Police say one man was found dead inside the home in a possible domestic related situation and a female suspect was taken into custody at the scene and transported to the hospital with minor injuries. Nathan Papes/News-Leader

Police investigate a homicide in west central Springfield on Feb. 2, 2017. Police say one man was found dead inside the home in a possible domestic related situation and a female suspect was taken into custody at the scene and transported to the hospital with minor injuries. Nathan Papes/News-Leader

Police investigate a homicide in west central Springfield on Feb. 2, 2017. Police say one man was found dead inside the home in a possible domestic related situation and a female suspect was taken into custody at the scene and transported to the hospital with minor injuries. Nathan Papes/News-Leader

Police investigate a homicide in west central Springfield on Feb. 2, 2017. Police say one man was found dead inside the home in a possible domestic related situation and a female suspect was taken into custody at the scene and transported to the hospital with minor injuries. Nathan Papes/News-Leader

Police investigate a homicide in west central Springfield on Feb. 2, 2017. Police say one man was found dead inside the home in a possible domestic related situation and a female suspect was taken into custody at the scene and transported to the hospital with minor injuries. Nathan Papes/News-Leader

Police investigate a homicide in west central Springfield on Feb. 2, 2017. Police say one man was found dead inside the home in a possible domestic related situation and a female suspect was taken into custody at the scene and transported to the hospital with minor injuries. Nathan Papes/News-Leader

Springfield police say they are investigating a homicide Thursday afternoon in the 800 block of South New Avenue.

Lt. Robert Byrne said officers were dispatched about noon to a house near the corner of New Avenue and Madison Street for a possible domestic assault. After entering the residence, Byrne said, officers found one man dead.

A woman was taken into custody at the scene and then transported to the hospital with minor injuries, according to Byrne.

Byrne said the man and woman were in a romantic relationship, but he did not know if they were married.

Byrne said he couldn't describe the man's injuries other than saying they were "non-accidental in nature."

About 10 police cars responded to the home in west central Springfield and by 1 p.m. had it surrounded with crime scene tape.

An ambulance was seen leaving the scene at about 12:45 p.m.

The gray house was taped off and the front door remained open throughout the afternoon. The roof had three different colors of shingles and the front porch had been repaired with unpainted two-by-fours.

The neighbors on either side of the residence said the home where the homicide took place was a rental property and that the couple who lived there had only moved in about a month ago.

Police have not yet released the names of the suspect or the deceased.

Deanna Fischer, 53, said she did not know the man and woman who lived next door and called the homicide "shocking."

Fischer said she's lived on New Avenue since she was 15 years old, and this was the first homicide she could recall taking place on her street.

"It's mostly elderly people that live in this neighborhood," she said.

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Deanna Fischer, 53, has lived on New Avenue since she was 15 and doesn't recall a homicide ever taking place on her street.(Photo11: Giacomo Bologna/News-Leader)

Fischer said she didn't hear anything Thursday that would suggest a homicide had taken place next door.

Neither did the woman who lives on the south side of the crime scene tape, Robyn Wilson.

Wilson, 59, said she would wave to the man and woman who lived next door, and they would wave back, but that was the extent of their interactions.

She's lived in her house for about 13 years and said the street has improved during that time.

"I'm not really scared, but I think it kind of gets your blood flowing when you see cops running down your street with their guns drawn," Wilson said. "It's usually pretty quiet."

Wilson, who lives with her husband and mother, said she had been planning on eventually moving back to her hometown of Paris, Tennessee, and the homicide next door makes her want to move away faster.

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Robyn Wilson, 59, has lived on New Avenue for 13 years and said the street has improved during that time.(Photo11: Giacomo Bologna/News-Leader)

"Every day you turn on the TV and someone's been shot or stabbed or run over," Wilson said. "I know it happens all over, but I'd like to go back to my cow town."

As Wilson spoke to the News-Leader, a man drove down the street in a red truck, noticed the crime scene tape and police cars, turned around and drove back up the street.

The driver, Ron Leverenz, rolled down his window. Leverenz owns a military collectibles store in downtown Springfield and said he had an interaction with the man who lived at the house about a week ago.

Leverenz said he was contacted by the man through Craigslist about selling a Vietnam War-era howitzer shell, which Leverenz described as a "big shell that comes out of a cannon and blows crap up."

Leverenz said he met the man on the porch of the house and spoke with him after purchasing the inert artillery shell. Leverenz could not recall the man's name, though he described him as "happy-go-lucky."

"He was really nice. He was super nice," Leverenz said. "He didn't look like there'd be any trouble around him."